I thought this was very good......and i was chuckling to myself while watching it on 4OD as it dawned on my i had to watch the adverts as well. LOL
I also liked it more than the first one. I reminded a me this talk I saw once (the real meat of the issue starts around the 20 minute mark) on how big companies will attempt to use the acquisition of points to get us to consume their advertising, purchase their products and live "better" lives. The professor giving the talk did so with great enthusiasm, but I watched in horror as he described what I consider to be a dystopian future. But one thing gives me hope... ...the fact that I didn't see any ads while watching the show. There will always be technologically savvy people out there that will find a way to circumvent these new methods of advertising as they become more and more intrusive. The characters we saw in this program were like the future's version of Internet Explorer users. Are you entirely sure that those windows weren't just another screen?
Charlie Brooker tweeted that he wants to make the song from the episode Christmas Number One... The original obviously not the one in the show. [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY5rB067518[/yt]
That's an interesting point was it a screen or windows? At the end of the day the look on Bing's face says he's still in a prison, that's my take anyway.
That was a quantum leap in graphics technology. All we'd seen before now was cartoons. Possibly the bicyclists didn't deserve/earn decent graphics?
I have to say the first episode was the worst of the three. The last episode was a great use of the technological "What-If" they were going for. Everyone has had those arguments where you both recall things differently, imagine how difficult it would make life if you could just recall it at the touch of a button like that? And really a good extrapolation where the chronicling our lives on Social Networking sites really could do to your lives if taken to the extremes.
I liked this one too, it was about on par with the second episode for me. I liked how I spent most of the episode thinking Liam was a dick that was accusing his wife based on the flimsiest of evidence, but then you realise that this was based on suspicions that have been bubbling in his mind for over a year that were justified. It, ironically, brought back memories from my own past that I'd rather not remember. I've seen people complaining elsewhere that they didn't fully explore the concept and how it would be used by the police or whatever, but I liked how it used the sci-fi concept to tell a smaller character story. Seeing how technology affects society as a whole can be a treasure-trove of good storytelling, but exploring how it impacts individuals and their relationships is no less important. Also, that sex scene where they relived a past, more exciting sexual experience was one of the most disturbing sex scenes I've seen in a while, which is saying something considering I watched a Prime Minister fucking a pig two weeks ago.
^Well they kinda did explore the wider implications with the airport security stopping and having him replay the last couple of days and the last half an hour. The job performance review where they'll do a big recall of your time at the company, the talk of using it to sue your parents for trauma that happened to you as a child which you believe has adversely effected your life. The wider implications were there, albeit in a truncated form.
Nonplussed. I've seen this technology before, and they hardly scratched the surface about how it can chip away at ones humanity. Harlon Ellison wrote briefly about parents suing there parents in the 70s. Seriously. Knowing that your wife is cheating on you and she doesn't know you know is power. Power you can use. Forcing her to admit, makes her go away. "I was on a break" is from friends 20 fucking years ago. Good god in the wake of Dollhouse, how is this tech scary? Gouging is fun. But wirelessly uploading additional years of information into people would be hilarious, from a hackers perspective.
Are you kidding? This obviously isn't about suing parents, or having memories uploaded and shared, it's a human story of how being able to obsessively relive memories in every minor detail would ruin lives. A tiny suspicion could grow and grow, like here. Sex tapes would be here with everyone, imagine that drunken screw not just a source of embarrassment for you, but recorded for the other person to replay or share at their leisure, the way every minor detail could be extracted from life in general, facebook photos already ruin peoples chances at a job, imagine if people uploaded and tagged entire memories?
Well that's 50 minutes of my life I won't ever re-do....awful. I'm all for dark and gritty, but where the entire cast of characters are this unlikeable then there's nothing and nobody to engage with. The dinner party was just excruciatingly painful to watch. The central premise was interesting but was handled in such a dull way with a dull story riffing on Coupling's 'The Cupboard of Patrick's Love' without any of the energy from that story. Hard to imagine this was written by one of the Peep Show guys. Anything remotely interesting (gouging, the airport security, the woman without a grain not being able to report a crime, hell even his job review) was sidelined by a story that was essentially 'Eastenders in the future...' Frankly Strange Days and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind have trodden similar ground in far more engaging ways. Overall I'd review Black Mirror thusly... National Anthem: 7/10, batty and original storyline, exceptionally well cast and acted, let down by innumerable plot holes and the sheer ludicrousness of the plot 15 Million Merits: 9/10, standout of the series that rose above its very obvious subject matter to create a world you believed (to a degree) and characters you could engage with. The history of You: 5/10, poorest of the three by some margin... Be interesting to see if this gets another series (I'm not sure if Brooker even planned it to go on beyond these three stories) if it does I'd hope for more like the first two and less like the third!
Cool, I actually hope it does. It's something a little different from the norm. I'd kinda like to see it move away from just being an anthology related to technology issues, but I get that that's kind of the point, and where it gets the name from.
I don't know, unlikeable characters and painful situations are the things at the very core of Peep Show. Ah yes, the old "It's about human relationships, therefore it's a soap opera" mentality. How often do you pass airport security? How often do you report a crime? How often do you have a performance evaluation? A couple of times a year, or lifetime, most likely. Now, how often do you interact with friends or loved ones? I'm going to guess that it's something you do pretty much daily. So, is this thing that is a ubiquitous element of our lives not worthy of an examination through the lense of this magical technology? I'm all for sci-fi exploring how futuristic technologies could shape our societies, but exploring how they could impact us on a personal level is just as, if not more, important.
Human relationships are fine so long as I care about the humans involved, and whilst the characters in Peep Show are flawed, and are at times not very nice, I can relate to them and at times cheer them on, or at least feel something for them, even if its only pity. I felt nothing for any of the characters here, with the exception of the babysitter who I was embaressed for. Give me painfully human Mark Corrigan over any of the pretentious vaccuous arseholes that passed for 'characters' in this story.
I liked the series. Initially I was very sceptical, since imo critics usually don't make very good creatives; I'm not saying it's easy to bash stuff the way Brooker does, but it takes a different mindset to actually do something original. However I did like all three episodes. Not the best tv I've ever seen, but pretty compelling anyway. My biggest complaint would be, that it was a little wishy-washy. For example episode 1: was it supposed to be comedic or hard political drama? Because while it was entertaining it was neither especially funny nor convincing imo (there's simply no way a politician would survive fucking a pig on live tv, sorry, but no way). Episode 2 was "tighter" that way, but a little monotonous and as someone else said in this thread a very blatant Mary Sue.